Monday, April 19, 2004

Seriously big things.

Recently saw some interesting TV programmes.

One was about the Eirik Raude (Eric the Red) deep water oil drilling platform. This behemoth is used to drill in deep waters where drilling for oil has traditionally not been possible, due to the great depths. This thing uses GPS, computers and thrusters to maintain a near fixed position in some of the world's most inhospitable seas. While doing that, it can drill in seas up to 3000m deep and go down another 6000m. Pretty amazing stuff. We can probably thank the SUVs of America for making it possible.

The other was the Queen Mary 2 - 345 metres and 150,000 tonnes of incredibly luxurious, and expensive, way to get across the Atlantic. With a top speed of nigh-on 30 knots, you have to be impressed. But why did they have to use an Arabic numeral instead of Roman and why that nasty-ass font for "Queen Mary 2"?

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